Welcome to From Insults To Respect. Today we explore the question, Is it helpful or harmful to view our anxiety and grief experiences as painful?

Let’s begin this exploration with a diary entry from a mental patient that appears on page 224 in Richard P. Bentall’s fine book, Madness Explained:

Rhoda [a friend] asked me if I were spoiled and I angrily said no, but feel hurt, as if I was born for a purpose I hide from, covering myself with warm blankets. Go to hell, World! I cannot die in peace and safety. I cannot face the slightest breath of real life or death or ugliness. But I hurt for being a coward. I was always a coward – socially, physically, mentally, sexually, emotionally. If I go insane, am I brave? I will, because then, and only then, I am brave, not a coward. I hate people. They compete and want stimulation. I hate them all, all. None loves, none cares, none understands or ever will understand. I am dead, dead – very, very limited, afraid and hurt. Go to hell, World!

There is a lot we might wish to unpack in this quote, but for today, let’s focus on the fact that the patient mentions three times that what he is experiencing hurts.

In our society, many of us are taught, beginning in our earliest years, that to experience anxiety and grief is cowardly and symptoms of mental illness. From such teachings, many come to believe people who don’t have such feelings are brave and viewed with great respect. All of this occurs despite the fact that pretty much all of us regularly experience anxiety and grief, even those who act in the most courageous manner. The swirling emotions that come about from this misunderstanding is often experienced as painful.

Once we, in our modern society, come to associate anxiety and grief as painful, this leads many of us right into the idea that we best manage it as we do when we experience physical pain, that is, by distracting our minds to something pleasant and washing the feelings away by consuming alcohol and other drugs. And yet, even when dealing with physical pain, these two approaches are often far from optimal.

In research studies, when distracting oneself from pain was compared to a “sensory focus” approach, sensory focus came out distinctly better even for when dealing with the particularly challenging pain that occurs while giving birth (see HERE for a review of this scientific research).

Sensory focus involves turning your attention to observing the painful physical sensations. If the sensations bring forth words such as pain, or awful agony, you accept this without judgment. You very gently, when you feel ready, return your focus to the physical sensations as if you are tasting, for the first time, some fresh mountain water from a tropical island. You just observe the sensations as they wash over and through you.

As for using alcohol and other drugs to deal with physical pain, the problems that can occur are no doubt already known to most of you. Nevertheless, I will bring to your attention a few of them.

Millions of people who turn to alcohol to relieve pain end up with a serious addiction and liver damage. For those who turned to prescription opioids to manage their pain in 2018, there were nearly 15,000 deaths from overdoses. Drugs that contain acetaminophen, like Tylenol, are the leading cause of acute liver failure in the United States, and some studies indicate that it can be harmful to kidneys as well. Each year, the side effects of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), which are commonly used for pain, cause nearly 103,000 hospitalizations and 16,500 deaths. More people die each year from NSAIDs-related complications than from AIDS and cervical cancer in the United States. Common over the counter NSAIDs include ibuprofen (Motrin, Advil) and naproxen (Aleve).

So, because of the common tendency to deal with pain by distracting and taking drugs, conceptualizing the experiences that come with anxiety and grief as pain may not be ideal. So, today, let’s take a few minutes to consider another approach, and then we’ll compare it to the pain approach.

An Alternative Approach to Experiencing Anxiety and Grief

Let’s begin here with a series of studies indicating that how we conceptualize emotional arousing experiences can dramatically alter the experience.

These studies began in earnest back in 1964 when a team of researchers presented a film showing primitive adolescent “subincision” rites to their subjects and found that it produced marked stress reactions. However, when some subjects were coached to view the film as if they were objective scientists, their stress reaction was markedly reduced. The findings supported the conclusion that the same visual stimulus varies in the amount of stress produced depending upon the nature of the cognitive appraisal the person makes.

Subsequent studies replicated this study by using a series of films that showed horrific workplace accidents, and again, altering the cognitive appraisal strategy of the subjects, altered the level of stress experienced. So, perhaps altering how we appraise our experience with anxiety and grief might alter our level of stress for the better.

What might a better alternative to how people in modern society typically view anxiety and grief? Let’s try this one on for size.

We have, for over two million years, been evolving ways to address our concerns so we have a better chance to survive and to pass our genes on to subsequent generations. Two of our most common concerns involve perceiving a risk of future danger, which we experience as anxiety, and perceiving we have lost something or someone important to us, which we experience as grief. Recognizing these types of concerns is the first step in a more complete process of finding ways to minimize the risk of danger and to successfully move forward despite our losses.

These types of concerns are a type of memory that brings to our attention that we have some processing to take care of. One of the characteristics of dealing with these concerns is that we often can delay attending to them for a limited period of time so we can engage in other tasks viewed by us as having higher priorities. When we put off dealing with these types of concerns, they don’t just go away; they come back again and again reminding us that we have to adequately address them. Despite our efforts at putting them off, as our concerns begin to accumulate without being fully addressed, it becomes harder and harder to delay dealing with them. Our memory begins to remind us of them more frequently and more intensely until we reach a point at which we must attend to them, like it or not. If we put off taking time to process our concerns for too long, our functioning for dealing with many aspects of life can begin to deteriorate, and at some point, we may end up having what some people refer to as a mental breakdown.

So, with this understanding, anxiety and grief are part of a wonderful process, rather than a sign of mental illness that we need to distract ourselves from or to take drugs to manage. Part of this process requires that we devote enough time to process these concerns or the level of intensity is liable to become more and more challenging.

When we are reminded of our perceived dangers and grief, rather than automatically perceiving such experiences as painful, we can allow ourselves to observe the physical sensations that come with it. If words such as, “Man, this is painful,” “Man, this is hurting,” or, “I can’t stand this suffering,” we can observe them without automatically accepting them as accurate. What is accurate is the physical sensations, and the specific concern to be addressed as best as you can fathom. Once the sensations go through us, we naturally begin to spend some time thinking about some ideas to address the concerns.

An Example of Someone’s Personal Experience Dealing with These Types of Experiences

In a recent Mad In America post titled, “Can We Allow Suffering,” Karin Jervert tells us how she was treated by psychiatry over a 20-year period. She found that the entire industry is based on this very human, very common, reaction to suffering, the inability to allow it—the inability to hold it with nonjudgmental compassion—whatever its manifestation. When those in psychiatry perceived that she was suffering, they drugged her without consent, leading to some awful side effects. They also isolated her and involuntarily committed her. The terms they used were “disease” and “a broken brain.”

As Karin so eloquently put it,

For years, I never thought of my suffering as something that deserved anything but force in response: suppression, drugs, hospitalization. Until I started to look back on all this and it all seemed like punishment for suffering too greatly, too powerfully; that I was not allowed to suffer this way. So, I began to broaden my idea of what was acceptable suffering, and my healing began. My fears of my own and others’ suffering lessened. What before was something to pounce on, to solve, to fix, became something to witness, to honor, to allow.

So, there you have it, some thoughts about conceptualizing anxiety and grief as emotional pain, and what might be a better alternative. I hope you give this some thought, and please join us again soon right here at From Insults to Respect.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Today we’ll be taking an interesting look at the grief process.

When we experience a major loss, such as the death of a loved one, financial ruin, losses from a natural disaster, or learning of a serious personal medical illness, our emotions can become pretty intense. Common reactions are waves of deep sadness, rumination about the loss, sleep difficulties, and reduced appetite.

A popular model of this process is known as the, “Seven Stages of Grieving.” They are:

– Shock or Disbelief
– Denial
– Anger
– Bargaining
– Guilt
– Depression
– Acceptance and Hope

Sometimes, rather than seven stages, five are used to capture the same basic model. This is accomplished by combining shock, disbelief, and denial into a single stage, and combining bargaining and guilt into a single stage.

These stages do not occur in the same sequence for all people, and they can last for a brief period or quite a bit longer; and during the process, more than one stage may occur at the same time. So, for example, someone may feel shock, anger, and waves of guilt all within a few seconds of one another, or they may all seem to merge together into one combined experience.

Beliefs that we learn from cultural norms can complicate the experience, making us feel at such times that we are acting in a manner that people may not respect. If we start to cry in front of others, will we be perceived as a weakling? If our bereavement lasts longer than what others may think is proper, will we be viewed as having some type of pathological condition?

In an extraordinary Feeling Deeply podcast, Emily Whyte Rubin, my daughter-in-law, interviews Jack Baxter, a guy from London who, having struggled with these issues, started a program to help others who are dealing with similar challenges. Called, “Good Grief,” the program essentially assists people to come together in small groups to share their experiences and to support one another. Let’s take a few minutes to look at some of that interview, and then I’ll express my views on this topic, and then invite those of you who are reading this post to weigh in.

The Feeling Deeply Podcast

This episode of Emily’s podcast can be listened to for free HERE. In introducing the interview, Emily explains that she chose to interview Jack Baxter because, “the human experience of grief is so prevalent, and something I believe many of us can use some more support around.”

After introducing Jack, she asks him what brought him to creating “Good Grief.” Jack’s reply, slightly abbreviated, follows:

“Sure. I’ll tell you a little bit about my story. It started with sadness, unfortunately. It started when I lost my father, Dave. He was 48. He was my best friend. You know, people talk about soulmates; I don’t believe you only have one soulmate, because, you know, I met someone else that I can label that. I’ve since met another soulmate, and I hope to continue to meet more, but my dad was very much my first soulmate; he connected with me in ways that I never connected with anyone. He was my best friend. I could tell him anything, and likewise, he would tell me anything–his advice, his wisdom, and I was lucky enough to have that man for twenty-two years.

“Sadly, he passed September 13th. He had skin cancer, which was, you know, tough for anyone to deal with, as you can imagine. I was only twenty-two at the time. It was like the center of my world had fallen out. It was a very tough time for me to deal with. I no longer had that support, and of course I had some friends and family, but no one like my dad who was, you know, who was there for me at times when I needed him most, and to be honest, I need him even now. You know, a young man needs his dad. And, well, we went on a journey of self discovery and I believe he was with me all that way as well. I made mistakes, ups and down, left and right, and, but, you know, I eventually sought some direction in “Good Grief” which, um, is a support group that I launched with some friends, Ben and James, and we offer support and advice for young people, in London at the moment, but we hope to venture out wider then that, for young people who have lost love ones, much like myself, and Ben, whose father died recently of brain cancer….

“To be honest with you, Emily, it was those people that I met whilst grieving, who understood my pain most. Ben was certainly one of those. I had two or three other friends who had all lost fathers themselves before, or shortly after mine, and they were the support group that I needed. I had lots of people telling me, ‘it will be OK and it will be all right, but it was those who experienced the same grief as me, they were the precious few who I really could listen to and I took strength from. And the group has been going from strength to strength ever since we launched in May, 2018.”

After Jack describes a little more of his grieving experiences, Emily asks him to describe in more detail what happens at these Good Grief meetings.

“We first like to point out that it is not professional help, because, first off, there is professional help out there….But I think what we offer is, you know, just a group of understanding, empathetic young people. So we sit in a circle, or at least around a table. It’s all very informal; there are biscuits and cookies in the middle. We offer people to snack on them if they want to. Drinks are available, and it’s just a relaxed format. We sort of ask, that just by being there, you are acknowledging that you want to live a life with grief. You never beat grief, you know, you live with it. And just by being around that table, you are admitting to yourself that, well, enough is enough and I want to move forward carrying this weight with me. So we ask people to just introduce themselves. We go around the table clockwise, and we say, you don’t have to say anything tonight if you don’t wish, because this is a big do, it’s absolutely a big deal to sit in a room of strangers and to talk. You know, that’s hard enough. But to talk about some personal issues, that’s very hard. So we stress that you don’t have to talk if you don’t want to, but, at the very least, just say hello, and who it is that you miss…. And then, the person to the right of me would say, hello and it would go from there. And you find, Emily, that once people start saying their hellos, and start introducing themselves, questions just organically are asked by other participants, and there is this whole range of grief that at least one other person can identify with, be it a death from cancer, or a death from suicide, or a car accident. There will be someone else in that room that can identify. And that’s where the questions are asks, and that’s where the support is grown. And it’s a wonderful thing to be a part of.

Emily, then expresses how touched she is about how organic the process is, how simple, and yet, also, how vulnerable it is in its simplicity, to open up this space, and to go directly into that conversation.

Jack replies,

“It’s an amazing thing. You are right. It is so organic. There is no seminar leading up to it. This is what you can expect. You just jump in at the deep end, as they say. You know, you sit around the table and there’s a brief hello, and…my name is Jack, this is Ben…. And then we just start a conversation…. It’s normalizing the grief, the confusion, and everything else that can come with death at a young age.”

At one point, Emily responds,

“Yes, and that reminder about not having to fix it, you never will be able to beat grief….That grief is something that we move in and out of our whole life. And to be able to have a space where that is welcome. It’s not like, ‘Well it’s okay, I’ll listen to you, but it’s welcoming you, that aspect.”

To this, Jack replies.

“That’s exactly right, Emily. You never complete grief. You never conquer it. It just becomes your new normal. You wake up one day and you realize my dad is not here anymore. But I will, to the day I die, carry that badge of honor that I miss my dad every day. But I got a new normal, a new focus, new responsibilities, new excitements. Also, new sadness. You know, other things have happened in my life since losing my dad that makes me sad, besides, so its acknowledging that you are normal feeling the way you do, and also continuing to feel that way whilst feeling happy, and whilst feeling sad. You don’t have to feel guilty about having a good day. It’s a safe space to be able to sit around with other people that could confirm that you are not a bad person for having a good day, or you are certainly not a bad person for having a bad day. It’s an incredible thing that I take no credit for, because it’s something so natural to me to facilitate a conversation about this.”

Well, there is so much more to this interview worth listening to, and I encourage my readers to take some time to give it a good listen to. But for now, let’s pause here and consider what was said up to this point in the conversation.

Some Thoughts

For me, personally, I tend to grieve internally, letting the experience flow through me, and I don’t feel a need to reach for a supplemental support group. In the past, when someone close to me died, I went to the funeral, spent a few days with people close to me, and then I processed the most challenging aspects of the experience that was, and is still, running through me mostly on my own. I have a supportive wife, and my children are a great source of comfort to me.

When my mom died, I had extended feelings of waves of guilt over whether I could have been more helpful to her when she was alive. I still do have these feeling from time to time, but I feel that I can deal with them without a special support group to help me through it, though I still miss her.

Although my personal approach is working for me, over the years I have met people who, it seems to me, really would benefit with the type of group Jack has put together. For example, a friend of mine whose wife died suddenly is now in his house all alone. It has been very rough on him. What a wonderful resource it would be for him if he could share what he has been going through, and offer support to others in a Good Grief type group. And I know others who, within their family structure, would meet with disrespect when showing any signs of tearfulness. “Man-up!” would be the demand they would face, or, “Don’t cry, it will all be okay.” For these folks, a more supportive group could be an enormous help.

Grief is a process that helps us to prepare for life after a serious loss. I respect that Jack is trying to be helpful and kind as he seeks a way to create something to honor his father’s life. In listening to the whole interview with Jack, I was left wondering if it makes sense to view grief as good, bad, it just is, some mixture of all three, or even something entirely different?

How do those of you who are reading this feel about what Jack has been doing, and grief in general? I’d love to hear from you.

Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional and social intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.